I cannot overstate how imminently relevant I find this book to be.  Check out an interview with one of the editors here.  More later.

Perhaps the most obvious answer is a simple one: there is no evidence that schools alone, no matter how well funded they are, can lift people out of poverty when every other social policy drives them down. 

Right now the vast majority of School Reform dollars go into the pockets of middle class and upper middle class professionals who live far from the neighborhoods in which “failing” schools are located- management consultants, employees of test companies, computer and information system managers, teachers and administrators in charter schools. They do nothing to develop local economies, strengthen families in need, provide employment to marginalized people, or redistribute income from the very wealthy to the very poor. If you wanted to be cynical, you can say that School Reform, in the name of helping the poor, has created a wonderful job program for the children of the middle class.

But that can only happen because most ( but not all) School Reformers divorce the goal of improving schools from the goal of lifting communities out of poverty. As progressives, our job is to insist that the School/Community linkage be foremost in all Reform efforts, and that the vast majority of the funds to improve schools in poor communities be used to create jobs and programs for people who live in those communities. No more consultants, no more tests, no more computer systems, no more hot shot teachers who spend two years in low performing schools then leave.

—School Reform, Community Development and the Mal-Distribution of Wealth: The Road Not Taken by Mark Naison

On some mornings

when I sting myself

by waking up later than I should,

I’m presented with a simple quandary:

Do I take a shower?  or write my poem?

Hemorrhaging time constrains me from doing both

And so,

for the sake of my running life

I do

what any sane man would.

(inspired by my baby bro)

Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities. And in the building of those castles of possibilities it frees the creative matrix of men and women. When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you’re suffering in.  —Ben Okri, CNN interview

Yes.  I’m convinced that “The Revolution” lies simply in inculcating habits of creativity…Okay it’s not so simple, but still..